Preparation of mesoporous copper cerium bimetal oxides with high performance for catalytic oxidation of carbon monoxide

A series of mesoporous copper cerium bimetal oxides with different copper contents were replicated from the KIT-6 silica using mixed solutions of Cu(II) and Ce(III) nitrates as metal sources. These bimetal oxides were characterized by XRD, TEM, nitrogen sorption at 77 K and XPS. Catalytic oxidation of CO as a standard reaction was used to test their activities. The optimized performance was achieved for the catalyst CuCeO2-20 with 20 mol% copper contents and half CO conversion was reached at 350 K with a space velocity of 260,000 mL h−1 gcat−1. No obvious deactivation was observed for over 10 h on stream at 373 K.